Only a few months after accidently blowing up the principal’s office at the CIA Academy of Espionage, 13-year-old Benjamin Ripley is back with another explosive assignment, and the stakes couldn’t be any higher.
With reliable intel that the evil organization SPYDER is plotting an assassination attempt against the president of the United States, Ben is handpicked to go undercover as a friend of the president’s son to stop the attack before it happens. In keeping with Spy School adventures past, nothing ever goes quite as planned, and Ben and his agent-in-training classmates find themselves embroiled in a high-stakes and hilarious secret operation to save the leader of the free world. While Gibbs largely sticks to the formula that readers have come to know and love, the setting takes on added importance in this installment, keeping the story fresh and adding depth to the otherwise lighthearted spy romp. As it’s peppered with entertaining historical trivia, readers may even learn a thing or two as they follow Ben from one Washington, D.C., landmark to the next. While Ben is white and the rest of the cast lacks significant racial diversity, their individual quirks and humor will likely appeal to middle-grade readers. Strong female characters like Ben’s crush, superspy-in-training Erica Hale, add a gender balance and strengthen the story.
This is espionage well worth uncovering. (Thriller. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-7782-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The famous superhero returns to fight another villain with all the trademark wit and humor the series is known for.
Despite the title, Captain Underpants is bizarrely absent from most of this adventure. His school-age companions, George and Harold, maintain most of the spotlight. The creative chums fool around with time travel and several wacky inventions before coming upon the evil Turbo Toilet 2000, making its return for vengeance after sitting out a few of the previous books. When the good Captain shows up to save the day, he brings with him dynamic action and wordplay that meet the series’ standards. The Captain Underpants saga maintains its charm even into this, the 11th volume. The epic is filled to the brim with sight gags, toilet humor, flip-o-ramas and anarchic glee. Holding all this nonsense together is the author’s good-natured sense of harmless fun. The humor is never gross or over-the-top, just loud and innocuous. Adults may roll their eyes here and there, but youngsters will eat this up just as quickly as they devoured every other Underpants episode.
Dizzyingly silly. (Humor. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-50490-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S ACTION & ADVENTURE FICTION
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Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S ACTION & ADVENTURE FICTION
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